Posted by ashamael on 12/3/2012 9:43:00 PM (view original):I have no interest in playing any progressive where I'm forced to give up half or more of my team every season. Might as well be playing an evolving theme if you do that.

Wouldn't this be the case (after a few seasons) with your contract idea from earlier in this thread?

Keep the hard $52 M cap and let the owner decide who to keep and how many. The unique aspect of this league is the clones.
How many progs have there been with 3 Russells or Jordans? Why not.
For me the clones are the hook and and it would give owners a chance to experiment and try new combos.
Each season you should be able to cut/keep as you like.
Incentives are cool but owners will bail regardless.

Posted by ashamael on 12/3/2012 9:43:00 PM (view original):I have no interest in playing any progressive where I'm forced to give up half or more of my team every season. Might as well be playing an evolving theme if you do that.

Wouldn't this be the case (after a few seasons) with your contract idea from earlier in this thread?

contracts weren't my idea.
i liked the contracts idea initially but only if I could keep a few players as long as I wanted as long as I engineered the contracts correctly.

Keep the hard $52 M cap and let the owner decide who to keep and how many. The unique aspect of this league is the clones.
How many progs have there been with 3 Russells or Jordans? Why not.
For me the clones are the hook and and it would give owners a chance to experiment and try new combos.
Each season you should be able to cut/keep as you like.
Incentives are cool but owners will bail regardless.

When did this league become about clones? Clones in progressives make no sense whatsoever to me.

Not trying to be hard to get along with... I just don't think a lot of you realize how much goes into a progressive and how even a little complication kills one super quickly (the upl never makes it past season 8 or 9; the pcl is on life support and wouldn't be doing season 3 if half the owners weren't taking multiple teams).

The thing with the incentives I suggested is that... if the league dies at any point, you can simply assign prize money early. And anybody that does bail forfeits so... yeah.

Here's a different idea altogether:

I've had the idea for the longest time of doing a mini-progressive: 5 years. Draft your guys and pick five different seasons of each. Make 5 teams. Play them simultaneously. You get some progressive themes but the commitment is shorter, but it costs more to play since you have to play them all at the same time. You could also not do it simultaneously and still keep the theme of the mini-progressive.

You could either a) force everyone to pair the players according to how they progress (thus 86-87 Barkley & 00-01 Allen are together, as are 92-93 Barkley & 10-11 Allen) or b) let each combination be up to the owner as long as 5 different seasons are used.

You can do a league-wide draft for no clones or just have a 5-year challenge where anybody can draft a squad but have to use the same players all five seasons. Problem with that is you're going to see alot of the same guys (I'll take 5 Rodman seasons, thank you very much, along with Wilt 65-66 thru 68-69 & 70-71), but it could still be really cool.

The length is somewhat irrelevant. 5 years gives a decent progressive feeling without getting too ridiculous. Could do 6 (buy a 6-pack and go), 3, 10 or whatever number you want.

Just another idea. I'm not jumping up and starting another prog while the one I'm supposed to be running is still alive, but I'm all for joining another as long as it's something I want to play.

the key component of that sentence was the "to me" part. Progressives, to me, are a league wide progression... whether you're talking about doing it from a specific year or an entire encompassing thing. Part of what's special about a prog, again, to me, is that there are no clones. You see one single Moses Malone progress through his career. You see a single Michael Jordan; a single Dennis Rodman. Because of this, you actually see a lot of guys who never make it into normal leagues. It adds a lot of flavor that most leagues lack. Again, this is just my opinion.

We could always do a progressive where everyone drafts their own team and everyone else's make-up is irrelevant. You run into a whole host of other issues doing that, however.

Yes I like the aspect of using players who had very good careers and yet are never used in open or theme leagues.
Once you discover the $41M cookie cutter the open league becomes boring IMO.
Part of the frustration for me with the PCL (Which I think is a very good prog. simple yet challenging).
I don't think many of the owners are very creative with it or don't TAKE or HAVE the time
to do the homework required to be successful.
This particular league I think will appeal to the ODL & 52M Theme type leagues because of all the
elite talent available. Or in other words you won't have to dig deep into the database to have or create
a great or competitive team.
Clones make that happen. In my perfect scenario the PCL would be done w/ its draft and playing
season 3. Maybe what this forum is asking is why don't straight forward progs. have a wider appeal?
Many of the answers may have to do with the game itself. Like I said long ago they should be
listening to people like you instead of just ignoring everyone.
Stop me before I ramble again!

The first is... it takes alot of commitment on the owners' part to build and maintain a winning team in a progressive. You figure 10 seasons of a progressive - that's like 2-3 years if things go quickly!

The second is... it takes some commitment from the site staff to readily maintain and update their product to achieve a happy customer base. That hasn't happened and many people have left. With a smaller pool of owners to draw from, it becomes harder & harder to keep themes going... much less progressives!

Posted by seapilots on 12/4/2012 6:13:00 PM (view original):Yes I like the aspect of using players who had very good careers and yet are never used in open or theme leagues.
Once you discover the $41M cookie cutter the open league becomes boring IMO.
Part of the frustration for me with the PCL (Which I think is a very good prog. simple yet challenging).
I don't think many of the owners are very creative with it or don't TAKE or HAVE the time
to do the homework required to be successful.
This particular league I think will appeal to the ODL & 52M Theme type leagues because of all the
elite talent available. Or in other words you won't have to dig deep into the database to have or create
a great or competitive team.
Clones make that happen. In my perfect scenario the PCL would be done w/ its draft and playing
season 3. Maybe what this forum is asking is why don't straight forward progs. have a wider appeal?
Many of the answers may have to do with the game itself. Like I said long ago they should be
listening to people like you instead of just ignoring everyone.
Stop me before I ramble again!

I think the problem with the PCL is some owners had a bad initial draft and have bailed. It's too bad because to me, the PCL is the perfect kind of prog league. It's as simple as the UPL, but with the cap there is a TON of talent available on the waiver wire or just undrafted. So bad teams should be able to rebuild quickly. As Ash said, it's about commitment and perhaps because WIS treats the basketball sim like a red headed step child, people don't want to commit. What excites me about this discussion is the most committed owners putting their heads together to come up with a league that will both generate the interest to fill and encourage the commitment to survive. That's what we need to figure out. IMO:

- Recruit quality owners we have some evidence will commit. If that means we wait a month or two, fine.
- Up-front GC for prize money similar to what was suggested early for incentive/commitment
- Start the off-season keepers and drafts before the end of the season and target a draft during playoffs. UPL loses momentum because people drag the arse giving keepers and the offseason can be weeks or months. dspahlinger is running to fairly succesfull progressive league and takes this approach and I believe it helps. If you're out of the playoffs, it stinks sitting around for several weeks.

I have thoughts on clones or not, contracts or not, how to combat tanking... but let democracy decide that. If my preference only gets 15 owners interested then it doesn't matter.

I've sent a personal sitemail to thirty owners. One kindly responded and said he is satisfied with the amount of teams he fields and the otther committed to being in/interested. Nobody else replied, unless obviously in this discussion.

Another point on if a progressive is a seller to me or not: I have to be interested in the player base. I don't know any of the 50s players and very few of the 60s, so I'm just flat not interested in an older progressive like that. I want to be able to use some of my favorite players of all-time (anytime I can get Barkley in a prog, I will. I joined the all-time regressive because zizzo sent me a SM saying that Barkley's team owner just bailed, which was really fortunate for me because that team was set up amazingly well). If I don't have a chance to do that, I'm just not interested. I'm not going to commit to a 10+ season thing if I have no interest in my players. I simply won't make a team without somebody I'm a huge fan of on it, much less a 10-season commitment!

I think that's why alot of progs have trouble when owners bail. It's tough to take over a team that doesn't have anybody you like on it. I watch the prog leagues in hopes that when one approaches the 80s, I can jump in with a poor team and snag Magic, Chuck or Mike.